Review: OLDTV review – Fun game or psych test?

OLDTV is a game that makes you doubt the very nature of the response you’re having to it.

Is it actually fun, or are you simply being compelled to interact with it by some deep seated psychological factor?

In other words, are you playing OLDTV, or is it playing you?

Stroop waffle

I realise I might have given you the impression that OLDTV is rather clever or high-minded. It’s really not. But it is quite effective at what it does.

Despite its clever presentation (more on which later), this a very simple and familiar game indeed. Essentially, OLDTV is a Stroop test – that well-established psychological exercise whereby a colour is written out phonetically while the colour of that lettering varies.

The idea is to identify the actual colour rather than the spelled out colour, but the dissonance between the two can be surprisingly challenging for our puny monkey brains.